Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 132: Book 2: Loop 15.4

Bimar and Miktik's bodies are positioned outside the gate to the scrapyard in the exact same positions I found them in last loop.

That's enough to ring alarm bells. Even Ahkelios shivers a bit at the sight. "Didn't they look like that last time?" he asks. "You told Bimar what was going to happen. It should be different this time, right? Even if only a little bit."

"Wish I had an answer for you, buddy," I mutter, kneeling down beside Bimar's body again. Tarin's expression is both stormy and dark, and he kneels beside Miktik, trembling slightly. He doesn't say a word. I've seen him express a variety of emotions by now, but I've never seen him this...

Distraught isn't the right word. Neither is fury. He lingers somewhere on the precipice between the two, radiating with anger and grief and determination, and it's somehow Guard who remembers to calm him down. He pulls him away, speaking something in quiet whispers to the old crow, and Tarin's trembling slowly ceases.

I'm grateful, I have to admit. I wouldn't even have known where to begin. But there isn't much we can find from the bodies: Tarin and Guard both agree that it's some form of Firmament overload, but we can't tell anything more without going in ourselves, and it's risky to do that this late into the loop.

"If it's immersion armor you're lacking, She-Who-Whispers keeps a number of them at hand in case something important is delivered," He-Who-Guards mentions. "They are crafted by the finest in Isthanok—unlikely to fail easily to a differential in Firmament. I will bring them with me when you reset."

"That's probably for the best," I say, although my stomach drops a little at the prospect of entering the scrapyard for myself. Then my attention catches on to what he said, and I catch his gaze. "Delivered?"

He-Who-Guards cocks his head. "This is the Intermediary," he says. "The point at which the Integrator homeworld connects to Hestia. You do not know this?"

"Uh... Miktik called it the scrapyard," I say. My brain's scrambling to catch up. Intermediary? "I thought this place was just for junk."

"It is," He-Who-Guards confirms. "Waste from the Integrators is often relegated to Integrated planets, because any given place can only handle so much concentration of Firmament. But it is also known as the Intermediary. If a delivery must be made, it is made through this."

"Why would..." I start, and then I shake my head, sighing. "It doesn't matter. Good to know, I guess. Let's not waste any more time. See you in the next loop?"

"See you in the next loop," He-Who-Guards echoes. Tarin nods next to him.

I hit the reset button.

In no time at all, we're standing back in front of the door to the Intermediary. Bimar stands with us, though she's leaning on me, her beak clenched tightly shut. Even now, her chest heaves with discomfort, and I can tell she hasn't entirely recovered from the Firmament overwhelming her.

If this is the state she's in, I can only imagine what state Miktik is in.

He-Who-Guard shows up before I do. He and Tarin worked together to move fast, apparently, and Guard tells me he's convinced Whisper to start defending the city. I'm not going to question it. I have my two temporal clones already out rescuing Vahrkos and Wander, so this is the final task I have.

It's the final chance I get, too.

Once More into the Fray is in tatters within my core. The skill's unusable. I might be able to use it to get a fraction of a second of a rewind, if that, and while it's a useful emergency button if things go really wrong, I'd rather not use it at all.

Gheraa did tell me that skills can be regrown given even a fragment of their Firmament.

I feel like you're being a bit greedy, Ahkelios comments, a half-grumble into our bond.

You know as well as I do how useful it'll be if we can get it working again, I tell him. He doesn't respond, but I can almost feel him radiating pleasure at the 'we' in that sentence.

Regardless, we stand in front of the Intermediary—Guard, Tarin, Bimar, Ahkelios and I. The immersion armor, as Guard calls it, feels awkward and clunky around me. I can feel that the metal is imbued deeply with Firmament, and I can feel the way it seals around me. The seal is so tight it nearly blocks my ability to sense Firmament outside of it altogether, which is... uncomfortable, to say the least.

The others wear similar suits. Ahkelios is the only one that stands untethered, balanced a little awkwardly atop my helmet.

"I don't think you should join us, Bimar," I try one more time. Bimar shakes her head, entirely unconvinced.

"I'm not leaving Miktik in there," she says stubbornly. I briefly consider knocking her out so she stays outside, but I don't really have the medical training to do that safely.

That and the last time I tried that I accidentally killed the frogs I did it to.

"Alright," I concede with a sigh. "Guard, you're sure you can stay connected to your proxies while inside? You don't have to come in with us."

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"I am most likely to survive a delivery event," He-Who-Guards replies evenly. "And the connection I share with my proxies run deep. It cannot be so easily severed simply by being within the Intermediary."

"The Intermediary can block Interface skills," I point out. Guardian of Fate's inability to reach into it continues to bother me, like a nagging thought I can't quite get rid of. There's no reason it should fail—the skill's supposed to be able to detect the upcoming death of anyone I consider an ally.

"If I am disconnected, I will leave," Guard allows. "But I will stay and assist otherwise."

"Thank you," I say, relenting.

Tarin stands outside the door, largely silent. I can see his impatience—he's only barely keeping himself in check. I don't push that patience any further, and gesture for Guard to open the door.

Nothing seems strange, at first. Everything is within expectations. I see piles of broken and discarded technology. I feel an overwhelming presence of Firmament that's palpable even with the suit I'm wearing. Tarin, Guard, and Bimar all step through the door and into the Intermediary without any hint of a reaction.

Then I step across the threshold, and...

An immediate, impossible sense of vertigo. The sensation of falling. A disconnect between Firmament and reality, like a knife wedged directly into the gap between the two creating a screeching alarm that blares directly into my soul.

I stagger. Ahkelios dematerializes, the ripple effect of that disorientation echoing through our bond and causing an involuntary, snap reaction.

Guard catches me. Tarin whirls around, immediately on alert. "What wrong?!" he demands.

I know what's wrong. The thing that's wrong is that I was right.

Gheraa's here. To be specific, his corpse is here. I can feel that familiar, too-confident Firmament, but twisted and rotting and blighted. Answers I shouldn't have filter in almost immediately, offered by my intrinsic connection with Firmament and my ability to sense it and by—

—by Gheraa himself.

An Integrator death is a massive, destructive spacetime event. Their entire existence has to unravel, and that unraveling is like decay written into the fabric of the universe: everything warps around them, a viral unreality that eats into the cornerstones of existence until all that's left is a maze that encompasses everything they were and everything they could have been.

"Breathe," Guard tells me. His voice is soothing. I latch on to it like it's an anchor. His Firmament is strong enough that it's like a second sun. I can find him, even when my senses are drowning in everything that is Gheraa and his death.

I breathe.

Gheraa's death is what's wrong here. What remains of him eats into the fabric of the Intermediary, causing it to overflow with uncontrolled, sixth-layer Firmament. It's not the same as the raw pressure of a connection with the Integrator homeworld—the protection of the suits doesn't matter to something like this.

This is just... the death throes of an Integrator.

But even still, something is strange.

Miktik and Bimar's bodies were found outside. If they had been left within the Intermediary, I have no doubt that this ongoing death would simply have erased them utterly, incorporated them into its own expanding narrative of decay. Instead, they were removed, which allowed Once More into the Fray to reverse what happened to them—at the very least, to reverse what happened to Bimar.

It's almost like...

He's still in there. He's trying to protect them.

The thought is foreign, in the sense that it's not entirely my own. Instead, it's a feeling generated from the space between my Firmament sense and my mind, supported by that little fragment of Gheraa I was able to preserve.

Intent. Interpretation.

I'm speaking with Gheraa's corpse. Not directly, not in any way that allows me to ask a question and receive a response, but on some level, what remains of him knows who I am. He can sense me, just as I can sense him, and he's...

He's trying to help. Even now, he's trying to help. The information he's given me about Integrator deaths. Bimar and Miktik, placed outside the Intermediary. Carried outside, no doubt.

They need to leave.

That's not my own thought, either. I feel a flow in Firmament, a shift, and a moment later, an unconscious body is deposited in front of me: Miktik. She's already partially overwritten, her Firmament sickly and weak and dying, and I can tell this is the best we're going to get.

She's been in here for three loops. She's worse off than Bimar, and Bimar isn't in a good state.

"You need to go," I say out loud, reaching down and picking her up. Miktik is... surprisingly light in my arms. I've never really thought about how different she is from so many of the species I've met on Hestia. I don't even know what her species is called. But she looks so small, curled up like this. "You need to get out of here now."

"But what—" Tarin starts, but Guard grabs both him and Bimar. He pulls them out, past the threshold, where they're safe.

I'm still inside. Still with Gheraa. Surrounded by him, really.

This is why Guardian of Fate couldn't tell what happened to Miktik and Bimar. The thought is a bit numb, delivered to me again by whatever vestige of Gheraa remains. Death surrounded by death. The death I already knew about hid their deaths.

It makes more sense than the sheer Firmament in the Intermediary being able to block my skills from operating correctly. It explains why Guard can remain connected to his proxies.

There's a sharp, distinct pain in my gut. I grunt, falling to my knees. It's not an attack—Gheraa isn't coherent enough to attack, even if he wanted to. If anything, I can feel him holding back, trying his best not to hurt me. To control that spiralling, decaying Firmament.

I'm forgetting something. He's trying to tell me something. Trying to remind me of something? I wrack my mind, trying to figure out what it is; whatever's allowing us to communicate isn't perfect. Gheraa is limited to a form of thought-manipulation to speak to me, which I'd be angry about if it weren't for the circumstances.

Or who knows. Maybe I'm not angry about it precisely because he's already accounted for that and controlled it. That's... a darker venue than I want my mind to go down, though. He's sacrificed a lot and proven himself twice over. I'm being an ass.

I almost quirk a grin at that. That definitely isn't my own thought, and it's almost comforting to know that whatever remains of Gheraa can still find the energy to sass me.

On to the point, though: What am I forgetting?

Something clicks. A pit opens up in my stomach.

If there's a raid... then there's a raid boss.